Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ): The Company

1. When and where did your company get its start?
2. Who are the owners of the company?
3. What makes your products unique?
4. Are your products handmade?
5. Are your products cruelty-free?
6. What ingredients do you use in your soaps and body products?
7. Do your products contain any allergens?
8. How do you ensure the quality of your products?
9. Are your products suitable for sensitive skin?
10. Where do you source your ingredients from?
11. Do you offer any eco-friendly or sustainable products?
12. Are your products safe for children to use?
13. How should I store your products to maintain their quality?
14. Do you offer gift packaging or gift sets?
15. Are your products suitable for vegans?
16. Can I customize the scents in your products?

17. How do I place an order on your website?
18. What payment methods do you accept?
19. What is your return/exchange policy?
20. How can I track my order?
21. Do you ship internationally?
22. How can I contact your customer support?
23. Are there any promotions or discounts available?
24. Can I find your products in local stores?
25. Do you have a rewards or loyalty program for customers?
26. What steps do you take to minimize your environmental impact?
27. Are your products suitable for all genders?
28. How many stores do you have and where are their locations?
29. Are you on any of the big internet marketplaces, such as Facebook, Amazon, or Ebay?
30. Do you have a wholesale program?
31. Are your products organic?
32. What is your company's policy stance on diversity?

Answer text goes here.

The company is owned by Canyon & Rose Allen, a mother-and-son team of artist-entrepreneurs.

If you've ever been to the factory, you've probably met Canyon. Likewise, if you've ever been to the Cape May store, you've probably met Rose. It's a family business, and the two of them are very involved. Other family members work for the company as well.

Our soap and body products are handmade in our studio here in Cape May County, New Jersey. We’ve been manufacturing by hand, in small batches, since the early 1990s. We use natural, fresh ingredients to create high-quality products our customers have loved for decades and will continue to love for many years to come.

We work hard to produce quality products while also maintaining a company-wide atmosphere of fun and adventure. Colorful soaps and scrubs, silly product names, a little tongue-in-cheek humor… it’s all just part of how we roll.

Yes, all of our products are handmade in small batches in our studio. If you catch us at the factory store at the right time, you can see our staff through the window in the back making and packaging our products.

Yes, they are! We test our products on consenting adult humans (usually family & friends) rather than animals. There's a whole blog post about our cruelty-free policy and testing procedures here.

We use the finest natural ingredients to make our products. The ingredients for each product are listed on its packaging as well as in its category pages and product info screens in the online store. It would take up far too much room on this page to list them here.

You can also view the ingredients index.

That depends entirely on what you're allergic to. Essentially anything can be an allergen, but we avoid the use of the super-common ones such as peanut products, for example. The rest is pretty much common sense, but we do try to make it obvious if something contains a known allergen. Our almond biscotti soap, for instance, is probably not a good idea for people allergic to tree nuts. The same goes for the cherry-almond-scented covfefe bar.

If you have contact allergies to anything, please read the ingredients and ask if you need clarification on something. We'll be glad to assist you.

Lots of trial and error goes into the development of each new product, along with testing it out ourselves and on family & friends (see Question #5), and then making it better with each iteration until it's ready for market. Once the recipe is perfected, we adhere pretty strictly to it to ensure consistency.

Perhaps the most important aspect of our quality assurance method, though, is that we listen to our customers. When a customer contacts us and gives us feedback, we take that information with us into the studio and see what we can do to improve.

Generally speaking, yes — unless whatever you're particularly sensitive to happens to be one of our ingredients. We do attempt to keep the worst offenders for skin irritation out of things, but there's always a small chance that even the most gentle products will irritate someone. It's impossible to be 100% on this.

Overall, our products are pretty gentle on the skin and we do our absolute best to keep it that way. After all, that was the reason Canyon initially started (See Question #1) down the road to soap-making: trying to create a soap suitable for his own family's sensitive skin.

We order supplies and materials from a whole host of different vendors. We select vendors for each item or material based on quality, price, sustainability considerations, social values, and (if applicable) whether or not they test on animals. We have a definite preference for cruelty-free materials and always strive to ensure our supply chain is as cruelty-free as it can possibly be.

If you're a vendor looking to promote your products to us, you can send us an email through our customer service page and let us know what you've got and how your company fits the criteria listed. If we're interested, we'll get in touch.

Yes! We strive to be as eco-friendly and sustainable as possible.

Some key points on the eco-friendliness and sustainability of our products and operations:

• Our soaps are made of biodegradable ingredients, making them safe for septic systems, greywater systems, and the environment in general.
• Our shampoo & conditioner bars help reduce and eliminate plastic waste from ending up in oceans and landfills.
• We use recyclable aluminum bottles for our lotions and body sprays to reduce plastic.
• Our perfume bottles are made of recyclable glass, again reducing and eliminating plastic waste.
• Our body butters are packaged in recyclable glass jars.
• Our sugar scrubs are packaged in reusable/refillable and recyclable glass jars.
• We use paper bags in our stores to reduce plastic use, and started doing so long before New Jersey's plastic bag ban.
• We reuse, repurpose, and recycle packing materials as much as possible.
• We purchase only biodegradable packing peanuts* with which to ship our web orders.
  (*note: you may receive some non-biodegradable ones mixed in because we save and reuse packing materials we receive in our shipments from vendors rather than sending them straight to a landfill. Not all of them have switched over.)

We are continuously working to further remove plastics from our products and supply stream and to make our products and operations a little more eco-friendly and sustainable. It's an ongoing process, and we're committed to it for the long haul.

Yes! There is nothing in our products that would be inherently unsafe for children. As long as your child isn't allergic to any of our ingredients you should have no issues.

The answer to this question varies by product, but here are some of the basics:

Soaps, Shampoos, and Conditioners:

Keep soaps as dry as possible between uses. Do not let them sit in water or lay on the shelf in the shower where a film of water will become trapped under them, encouraging their deterioration. Instead, keep them on a draining soap dish such that water drains away from them, or keep them in our Soap Saver and hang it up when not in use.

Sugar Scrub:

Keep the container tightly closed when not in use. Do not let excess water get into the container. If the scrub becomes waterlogged, you can usually restore it to usable condition by leaving it open in a well-ventilated area for a while and stirring it occasionally, allowing the excess water to evaporate. If it's too dry, spritz a little bit of water in and stir it up to rehydrate. Our scrub doesn't go rancid like others do, since it doesn't contain vegetable oils.

Body Butters:

Store them tightly closed and keep them away from sunlight. To avoid contaminating the butter with something that could make it spoil, wash and dry your hands before use or use a clean spoon or applicator. If you leave it open and it dries out, you can usually scrape the crust off the top and it will be fine underneath. With proper care and storage, they can last quite some time, but if they smell bad or turn dark gray or black, it's spoiled and should be thrown away.

Bath Bombs:

Keep bath bombs sealed in their plastic pouch until ready to use. They can and do go stale, so try to use them within 6 months. Storing them in humid conditions can cause them to take on moisture and accelerate the rate at which they go stale, so try not to store them directly in the steamy bathroom.

We have a variety of year-round gift sets to choose from and are working on some new ones to add to the mix!

This selection expands with Christmas-specific sets during the holiday season.

For the most part, yes. Anything we make that isn't suitable for our vegan friends is clearly marked or otherwise made obvious in such a way that a vegan would recognize it.

If you're a non-vegan, shopping for a vegan friend, just avoid anything with "milk" or "honey" in the name and you should be fine. Those and the occasional beeswax are presently the only ingredients we use that are animal-derived. They're in a very small portion of our product line, and they'll always be marked and listed in the ingredients.

answer text goes here.

Well you're already there, so that's half the battle already covered!

From our homepage, simply use the navigation menus to find the products you're looking for, add those products to your cart, and go through checkout. It's all pretty standard e-commerce site setup, so if you've ever shopped online it should be pretty intuitive. If you run into any issues, feel free to contact us.

We accept a variety of payment methods to make shopping easy and convenient:

In-Store:

In our brick-and-mortar retail stores we accept cash, all major credit cards, and debit cards with the Visa or MasterCard logo. Checks are not accepted, and we do not currently accept mobile payments such as Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, etc.

Online:

Online we accept all major credit cards, as well as PayPal.

There is a whole separate FAQ document dedicated to this here.

All orders are shipped via UPS and a tracking number is automatically forwarded to the customer. We use the email address you provide us during checkout to send that message. If you don't get your tracking number or have difficulty using it, contact us and we'll help you figure it out.

At the moment, we do not (sorry!). If you're outside the United States and want to order from us, the only advice we can offer is to try an international parcel forwarding service. These services receive your package here in the US and then forward it to you internationally for a fee.

We're pretty easy to reach through the customer service contact form.

You can also call us on the phone at:

Cape May Store:

(609)-898-0039
(calls regarding orders placed online should be directed here.)

Factory Store:

(609)-600-3339

Ocean City Store

(609)-814-2913

For the latest and most current information regarding promotions, discounts, sales, and other news, we highly recommend joining our mailing list — there's a signup box at the bottom of the page — and following our social media pages. Also pay attention to the promotional slider on the homepage, as we advertise sales there when they're happening.

That being said, we do typically run at least two free shipping promotions each year, a humongous sale campaign during the holidays (from Black Friday to mid-December), and smaller promotions throughout the year.

If you're local to our hometown of Cape May, New Jersey, then yes! We have three stores of our own in Cape May County that you can visit

The Cape May Store

526 Washington Street Mall
Lower Level
Cape May, NJ 08204

The Factory Store

1250 Hornet Road
Cape May County Airport
Rio Grande, NJ 08242

The Ocean City Store

836 Boardwalk
(between the Music Pier & 9th Street)
Ocean City, NJ 08226

In addition, there are several local companies and businesses selling products we've made specifically for them.

Unfortunately we don't have such a program at the moment, primarily because our software doesn't support it. However, it is something we're considering and looking into. If we implement it, we'll make a big announcement!

We take environmental issues seriously and are continually seeking ways to improve our practices.

Some key points on the eco-friendliness and sustainability of our products and operations:

• Our soaps are made of biodegradable ingredients, making them safe for septic systems, greywater systems, and the environment in general.
• Our shampoo & conditioner bars help reduce and eliminate plastic waste from ending up in oceans and landfills.
• We use recyclable aluminum bottles for our lotions and body sprays to reduce plastic.
• Our perfume bottles are made of recyclable glass, again reducing and eliminating plastic waste.
• Our body butters are packaged in recyclable glass jars.
• Our sugar scrubs are packaged in reusable/refillable and recyclable glass jars.
• We use paper bags in our stores to reduce plastic use, and started doing so long before New Jersey's plastic bag ban.
• We reuse, repurpose, and recycle packing materials as much as possible.
• We purchase only biodegradable packing peanuts* with which to ship our web orders.
  (*note: you may receive some non-biodegradable ones mixed in because we save and reuse packing materials we receive in our shipments from vendors rather than sending them straight to a landfill. Not all of them have switched over.)

We are continuously working to further remove plastics from our products and supply stream and to make our products and operations a little more eco-friendly and sustainable. It's an ongoing process, and we're committed to it for the long haul.

Sure! Who — regardless of gender — doesn't need to be clean and moisturized? Honestly, we generally tend to feel that fragrance doesn't specifically have a gender. People just like what they like. We do often specify in our descriptions if a scent is more likely to be perceived as "masculine" or "feminine", but who says you have to listen to that? Do your thing, and enjoy it.

There's a quote by author Elizabeth Gilbert that says, "Don't ever be ashamed of loving the strange things that make your weird little heart happy." We consider this to be vital and accurate advice for a happy and fulfilling life.

In addition to this fabulous online store, we have three brick-and-mortar retail stores — all located in Cape May County — that you can visit

The Cape May Store

526 Washington Street Mall
Lower Level
Cape May, NJ 08204

The Factory Store

1250 Hornet Road
Cape May County Airport
Rio Grande, NJ 08242

The Ocean City Store

836 Boardwalk
(between the Music Pier & 9th Street)
Ocean City, NJ 08226

Not at the moment, other than our modest presence on TikTok's shopping platform (still working on it!).

Yes, we do! Prospective wholesale clients may contact us through the form on our Wholesale page.

There is also a dedicated Wholesale FAQ.

Although we strive to keep our products as natural as they can be, that is not the same as "organic". We are not presently certified organic and make no claims or guarantees to that effect.

We're all for it! We don't discriminate in hiring, and over the years we've had staff of diverse ages, abilities, races, religions, gender identities, sexual orientations, nationalities, ethnicities, economic backgrounds, educations, political ideologies, etc. Likewise, our customers come from a very diverse cross-section of the population.

We've learned a lot from our customers and staff over the years, and we enjoy the interest, the vitality, and the new perspectives that such diversity and inclusion brings to our workplaces.

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